2: Discovering a New Body
As Li Mei tries to sit up, a sharp pain shoots through her limbs, and she realizes her body feels weak, fragile. Her hands tremble as she brings them up to her face. These are not the hands she remembers—pale, slender fingers, calloused and rough as though from hard labor. Her hair falls over her shoulders, dark and long, not like the shorter cut she had before. She realizes, with shock, that this is not her body.
Struggling to stay calm, she takes a shaky breath and begins to piece together the fragments of memory slowly surfacing. Through a flood of disjointed images, she learns that this body belongs to a girl of the same name, also called Li Mei, who has lived a life of hardship in this world—a world where strength and spiritual cultivation dictate one's place in society.